I've just begun trying to integrate video on to my sites. The .wmv video at http://psychicdeals.com is creating black rectangular marks when I scroll up and down.

So I've been trying to use .swf video on a test page: http://psychicdeals.com/test.html but so far am running into the following challenges/questions:

1. Does a visitor to my site need to have shockwave flash player to see .swf being played on the Windows Media Player, or, because Windows Media Player seems to play .swf video, can anyone with Windows Media Player see .swf video?

2. I'm finding that on my test page the .swf video runs in a loop even though my parameters for WMP say loop=false and PlayCount=1. How can I stop it from playing more than once?

3. The bar beneath the video on the test page does not move forward with the .swf video whereas it does move forward with the .wmv video. I'm wondering how to make the bar disappear or make it work.

4. Is there another video player I can use that will be as highly viewable as Windows Media Player? My concern given that over 90% of my visitors use Internet Explorer is that any other player will simply not have as high of a compatability with my visitors' browsers...and so I'll be forced to keep using the .wmv video which leads to black vertical rectangular marks on my desktop, laptop, and friend's computer!

Does a visitor to my site need to have shockwave flash player to see .swf

Yes, a visitor would need a flash player to view an SWF file.

2. I'm finding that on my test page the .swf video runs in a loop even though my parameters for WMP say loop=false and PlayCount=1. How can I stop it from playing more than once?

What at the settings in the SWF file itself ?

The bar beneath the video on the test page does not move forward with the .swf video whereas it does move forward with the .wmv video

Are you referring to the progress bar ?

Is there another video player I can use that will be as highly viewable as Windows Media Player?

The Flash player plugin comes with IE 7 and I think IE 6, so I'd say that's pretty compatible.

which leads to black vertical rectangular marks on my desktop, laptop, and friend's computer!

Sounds like you have some other issues to deal with besides a player !

Thanks for taking the time to respond to each component of my post. That's very kind of you

When I posted last I believe I was trying to play a .swf file with Windows Media Player. From what I understand that is not a good idea because the (yes, progress bar) does not move forward which looks strange.

So I've now added code for flash to play on my test page: http://psychicdeals.com/test.html and am now dealing with two remaining challenges:

1. the .swf video loops indefinitely (and I don't know how to examine the file at http://psychicdeals.com/welcomeswf.swf to determine its settings. I used the software CinemaForge to convert an mpeg2 video (that would always play once and stop in Windows Media Player) into an .swf file and it did not include any options for looping/non-looping.

2. there is no way to pause this video. I would like visitors to the site to be able to pause the video if they do not want it to play.

1 - The looping control is usually set when you save the original FLA file to SWF.

2 - You need a control that can add that for you, but again, you'd need the original flash file or another solution similar to what YouTube does to add it.

You might try www.flashkit.com.

Thanks again for your guidance, LadynRed

My .swf video was converted from an mpeg2 video using CinemaForge which didn't offer a "loop/don't loop" option in the process. Is there better "encoder" software that would allow me to convert from mpeg2 to .swf without the end product being "loopy"?

Yes, I would like the end result to look as if it were embedded YouTube video only without the YouTube logo. Unfortunately I'm afraid that because I'm a novice at inserting video that I don't even know the "language" of the process well enough to describe what I need. In a nutshell, I need to make the video that appears currently on my test page http://psychicdeals.com/test.html appear with a pause/play button...and to get it to stop looping.

Thanks for telling me about Flashkit. I've joined there forum and have begun learning about flash at their very resourceful site.

Update: I now have flash video up and running at http://psychicdeals.com and it is working fine except on the Safari browser. Does anyone know why it works on IE, Firefox, Opera and Netscape, but not Safari?

I was also wondering...

how (if possible) could I convert the following code so that the video plays automatically?

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://www.psychicdeals.com/ivc_flvp...elcome6flv.flv" width="245" height="200" id="ivc_flvplayer" >
<param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" />
<param name="movie" value="http://www.psychicdeals.com/ivc_flvp...elcome6flv.flv" /><param name="menu" value="true" /><param name="quality" value="best" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" /><embed src="http://www.psychicdeals.com/ivc_flvplayer_03.swf" menu="true" quality="best" bgcolor="#ffffff" width="245" height="200" name="ivc_flvplayer" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" />
</object>

kool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!